“Nor Feed Vietnam will be a joint-venture between us and a local partner.
“It will promote Nor Feed products made in France on the Vietnamese market. There are no plans, though, to establish a local manufacturing base,” CEO, Olivier Clech, told us.
Unlike in other countries, the joint venture will be targeting the pig sector first and then the poultry industry, he added.
The initiative is the result of a meeting with a young entrepreneur, Nguyen Anh Ngoc, who is taking charge of the affiliate, said Clech.
“This [joint venture] is a good opportunity because feed manufacturers are looking for alternatives to antibiotics, especially looking forward to 2020 when antibiotics bill be banned as growth promoters,” said that Vietnamese partner.
Meat consumption trends
According to official Vietnamese data, meat consumption should grow by 2.9% annually until 2022.
The Vietnamese feed market is forecast to reach US$10.55bn in value by 2022, according to a report from Grand View Research.
Meat consumption patterns in Vietnam though, said the market analysts, are quite atypical when compared to other developing countries, due to the high level of pork meat bought. They say this trend could be linked to rising incomes.
Data on consumption figures for pork meat in 2014 in the country of 90 million people was 28.8 kg per capita; poultry meat came in at 12.7 kg/capita, and beef and veal 9.6 kg/capita.
And Vietnam, said the research group, is still very dependent on foreign imports with three quarters of the feed additives used in livestock production imported.
Expansion strategy
Nor Feed has an annual turnover of €5m and double digit growth YOY. Its expansion strategy includes the goal of extending its footprint globally.
The company, which has a subsidiary in Algeria, has also been active in Asia for a number of years with a presence in the Philippines, South Korean, Japan, Taiwan and Thailand and Pakistan.
Clech told this publication previously that Nor Feed often enters new markets through business partnerships: “Our partners can be companies, agents, distributors. It is always a question of whether we can establish a relationship with them, of whether we have complementary schemes, resources and networks."
The firm has not yet entered China claiming it is unwieldy in terms of scale and that it has not yet nailed down a collaborator there. “Taiwan, on the other hand, is developing quite well for us, particularly since the move away from the use of antibiotic growth promoters (AGPs) in that market,” said the CEO.
South America also beckons. And while the US is not on its target list for now, the company is supplying a major Canadian pork integrator with plant extracts.
Clech said the Nor Feed strategy is to focus only on a few plants and molecules such as saponins, grape and citrus extracts. It teams up with local research institutes to ensure standardization and reliability of its plant extracts.